Friday night, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had a dinner in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss US-Russian relations. As a token, Secretary Clinton brought a yellow box with a button and the words “reset” on both sides in English and Russian. Apparently, the State Department got the Russian word for “reset” wrong and instead it said “overload”. This is highly symbolic, as incompetence and haste in foreign affairs are the enemies of wisdom, or as the Russian proverb goes, “Measure seven times before cutting”. …
We wish we were more surprised by the news this morning that the Obama Administration sent a secret letter to the Kremlin offering to turn tail on U.S. missile defense commitments to Eastern Europe in exchange for Russian help stopping Iran from developing long-range weapons. But former assistant secretary of state and Heritage vice president Kim Holmes saw this coming: A Turkish general once said: “The problem with having the Americans as your allies is you never know when they´ll turn around and stab themselves in the back.” On the …
National Journal is hosting an informative online forum this week on the Obama Administration’s strategy in Afghanistan. Heritage’s James Carafano identified the main points of a good strategy: Have the Pakistanis deal with the terrorist threat in their tribal areas, while Coalition forces defeat them in Afghanistan. Work to lessen tensions between Pakistan and India, so that Pakistan focuses on the internal threat. Help the Pakistanis develop the capacity to conduct effective, full spectrum counter-insurgency campaign. Continue to rely on unilateral military action in the tribal areas to protect troops …
The European Parliament has voted in favor of creating a European army. Although the initiative has a typically innocuous sounding acronym, SAFE (Synchronized Armed Forces Europe) it represents a major step toward the EU’s takeover of Member States’ armed forces. SAFE will be directed by an EU directorate, with its own training standards and operational doctrine. It will advance a dream long-held by European elites to create a separate EU military identity outside of NATO. But in the absence of additional defense Euros and additional European manpower, the advancement of …
The past week saw a significant animation in the U.S.-Russian relationship. Moscow received Under Secretary of State William Burns, National Security Council Director of Russian Affairs Michael McFall, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Patrick Moon. Presumably, the U.S.-Russian relationship agenda is multidimensional – nuclear disarmament, missile defense issues, cooperation on Afghanistan. It looks like the sides have decided to define the outlines of an anti-corruption agreement viewed as the first document to be signed by the Obama Administration and the Kremlin. All this …
Despite Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Europe last week, and Secretary of State Clinton’s meeting with the Czech Foreign Minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, this week, we still don’t know whether this Administration will honor U.S. agreements with Poland and the Czech Republic to deploy elements of a U.S. missile defense shield in Europe (known as the ‘third site’ deployment). Obama has successfully–and probably deliberately–provided enough ambiguity to make a decision either way. On the one hand, he has pledged to field defenses against WMD attacks but on the other he …
Despite a harsh economic downturn, Moscow is continuing down the road of solidifying its positions in the post-Soviet space and crowding the United States and NATO out of the regions it deems its sphere of influence. The past week saw an array of developments along this same track. Clearly under Moscow’s pressure, Kyrgyzstan passed a decision to evict the U.S. air base in Manas from its territory. In return, Bishkek is set to receive unprecedented benefits from Russia – an easy-term loan to the tune of $2 billion, a $450-million …
This past Saturday, Vice President Joe Biden gave a troubling speech at the 45th Munich Security Conference. Heritage Director for Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom calls the speech “one of the weakest projections of U.S. leadership on foreign soil in recent memory. The message was confused, apologetic, over-conciliatory, and remarkably lacking in substance and detail.” Gardiner details: Iran In essence, Biden offered a quid pro quo deal with Iran–the kind the European Union has offered for several years with absolutely nothing to show for it except spectacular failure. … There …
On January 21, French Defense Minister Herve Morin announced that the French government would be unwilling to send more troops to assist in NATO-led operations in Afghanistan. Morin’s comments came on the heels of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s announcement the day before that indicated German reinforcements to the NATO mission would not be forthcoming. Currently 2,800 French and 4,500 German troops serve alongside 32,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan, though many of the French and German soldiers are performing non-combat roles in the more peaceful northern areas of the country. The …
Just as Europe is in the midst of a particularly cold winter, Russia’s quasi-governmental gas giant Gazprom has turned off the gas taps to Ukraine, a major transit corridor for Russian gas into Europe. Gas shortages are being reported in several countries, including Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and the Czech Republic. Europe gets more than 40 per cent of its gas from Russia, although many European countries such as Poland are 100 percent reliant on Moscow for supplies. This isn’t the first time that Gazprom has engaged in energy-intimidation – it …
